Whenever I see a musical-comedy audience consisting mainly of senior citizens and small chidren, as was the case in Philadelphia last Sunday, I can't help but remember the galvanizing originality of productions like the "Our Town"-flavored "Carousel" that Charles Newell staged at Chicago's Court Theatre in 2007, or Bill Rauch's high-concept "Music Man" at the 2009 Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

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If you are thoroughly motivated by what you see, iO offers a range of courses on comedy to suit every budget.

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Some unusual events will see Billy Kirkwood perform in a city tattoo parlour, late night comedy at St Enoch subway station and Julia Sutherland take her routine to Ibrox Library.

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We see action, romance, comedy, revenge, damnable villains, and a heroic (though complicated) central character.

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He'd prefer to see them try to "crack the code for the big family comedy, " a la Family Ties and The Cosby Show, since its broad-based appeal and subsequent financial upside is that much greater.

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The play - opening at the Comedy Theatre in October - will see the 38-year-old play a former political prisoner who kidnaps a man she believes raped and tortured her.

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Once-upon-a-laugh-track, many brands kept the humor strictly off camera, but Brand Keys has put one of those categories under the research microscope to see how humor is working in a field once thought far too serious to put in the hands of comedy: Car Insurance.

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So I think that's going to be very powerful in its visual imagery ... and they're going to see these images constantly on television, probably offsetting a lot of the negative imagery that they may see in shows and videos and sometimes in stereotypic comedy.

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